Lack of applicants makes you creative
Looking for employees with speed dating on the platform
05/20/2023, 11:30 am
In view of the shortage of skilled workers, waiting for written applications with a photo and CV is no longer enough for companies to fill thousands of vacancies. With new initiatives, events and offers, they make their way to potential employees.
Find out about a job at the railways with a view to departing and arriving trains or have a job interview in just five minutes? In order to find new employees despite the tense situation on the job market, more and more companies are using creative approaches to recruiting staff. In Frankfurt, Deutsche Bahn (DB) relies on a contact point directly in the main train station. “In the DB Job World, interested parties can simply drop by without an appointment and find out more about the more than 500 careers at DB in a relaxed atmosphere,” says Annamaria Dahlmann, Head of Personnel Recruitment at the company in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.
In April 2022, a careers advice service for Ukrainian refugees opened in a former travel agency on the side platform, initially in cooperation with the employment agency. One of the people seeking advice at the time is now a consultant in the “DB Job World”, which has been operated solely by DB since December. Together with a colleague, the Ukrainian advises on weekdays in several languages about entry opportunities in the group. “We hold 100 to 150 consultations here a month. About five to ten people are hired every month,” reports Dahlmann.
From the manager to the homeless, from those looking for training to career changers, many different people have already been advised in the “Job-Welt” reports Florian Brech, project manager of the “Job-Welt”. The spontaneous contact points in Frankfurt and Leipzig were among the many small building blocks to recruit staff. In Hesse, DB plans to hire around 5,000 new employees every year, and more than 25,000 across Germany.
According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, 630,000 vacancies in Germany cannot currently be filled with skilled workers. While more and more people are retiring, demographic change means that fewer and fewer people are coming up and many jobs remain vacant. The Ministry expects that by 2060, without immigration, every third worker available today in Germany could be missing.
Companies “apply” to people
“As a company, we also apply to the people with the offer to a certain extent and approach them with it,” says Dahlmann. Steven Hille agrees that other companies should also approach applicants when recruiting staff. “Today, companies have to be active in the search for applicants,” says the project manager of the “Stell-mich-ein” platform, which has been organizing so-called speed recruiting events in the communications industry throughout Germany since 2012. Customers of the events, which take place in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Berlin, for example, but also digitally, are agencies for design, PR or marketing.
The idea and principle go back to speed dating. But instead of looking for a partner, everything revolves around finding a new job or a new employee. “At the events, 30 career starters and young professionals get to know up to ten agencies in one evening,” Hille explains the concept. The following applies: One application – up to ten quick job interviews at different companies, because each interview between the job seeker and the employer only lasts five minutes. Then the table is changed as in speed dating.
The organizers make the pre-selection from more than 100 job seekers per event on the basis of online applications in which professional references and personal goals are requested. The companies pay 1,500 euros for participation per event. Participation is free for applicants. “Companies hire an average of 1.25 people per event. Every third applicant finds a job through participation,” says Hille. Even if no employment contracts are usually signed in the evenings, the express job interviews are often the basis for follow-up interviews.
Due to the success in the communication industry, a new format for the tourism industry was created last autumn as a cooperation between “Stell-mich-ein” and the German Travel Association. The “easyboarding” platform implements the concept of speed recruiting for companies in the tourism industry. “Especially in tourism, the corona pandemic has opened up large gaps in personnel. The rapid search for personnel at events should help to overcome the shortage of skilled workers,” reports Hille.